NORTHERN CALIFORNIA / Asian American university deans honored

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, January 17, 2007

A local organization gave two Northern California college deans its first annual Chang-Lin Tien awards to promote the professional development and advancement of Asian American leaders in higher education.

The fund honored Kang for what it said was a significant increase in the Baskin School of Engineering's national visibility and for quadrupling outside funding for research and securing the resources to double the faculty.

Under Wei's leadership, the engineering school at San Jose State developed a project to increase students' global competitiveness and it increased externally funded grants and contract awards, the fund said.

Asian Americans are significantly underrepresented at high levels of academic leadership, holding just over 6 percent of 40,000 faculty positions at U.S. universities but only 1.5 percent of university president positions, according to a 2005 report by the Committee of 100, a national group of Chinese American leaders.

The awards were named after UC Berkeley's chancellor from 1990 to 1997, Chang-Lin Tien. The fund, established in 1993 to improve the well-being of all Asians in the Bay Area, has distributed nearly $3 million in grants and awards.